Cheap as chips.......

[Newton]

Following the retro sweet thread. When did you first go to the chippie?

How cheap were your chips?

I remember in the dim and distant mid seventies.

A five of chips.........5p a portion.....

Can you do better??

[Florence Fennel]

I used to get 'ap'orth o' chips and scraps were free - that's giving my age away For those babies amongst us, 'ap'orth is a halfpenny worth in old money. Don't get me going

[Bigmallly]

My earliest memory was a threpenny bag or if you was flush you could have a fourpenny bag which was nearly twice the size.....

[veggiechicken]

I'm with FF on the pricing! Each week we would collect all the newspapers and take them to the chippies and swap them for a bag of chips. The real treat we called "Scrumps" - the bits of batter that fell of the fish in cooking - they were free but you had to ask for them, nicely! Is that your "scraps" FF?

[Florence Fennel]

Sure is VC! In my teens (and probably yours) the chips went up to a six pen'orth and a shilling for a small fish. I'm not sure if it's only in Sheffield, but our fishcakes are a sandwich of two big slices of potato with fish in the middle and battered. We thought it very foreign when an Irish family took over our local chipshop and started serving what we called rissoles - mashed potato with fish mixed in and battered. Oh the memories.

[veggiechicken]

Wasn't there some sort of potato shortage and prices shot up? I don't remember having fishcakes of any sort but I did like "potato" ?scallops - mega huge slices of potato in batter. In fact anything in batter still goes down a treat! I'm on the fish & chip diet!!

[Florence Fennel]

We still love to get potato scallops as you describe VC - always wondered why they're called scallops.

[veggiechicken]

Do you think its from "escalope"?

[Nicos]

A sixpenth family sized bag of chips in the car after the pictures with my parents- sometimes we'd go to my grandma's after that for a cuppa.
Thinking about it, it must have been a matinee performance during the winter cos my parents were always very strict about an early bedtime.
The car always smelt of vinegary chips the next day!

VC- I recall that potato shortage and my father complaining that the chip prices would never drop again when there were plenty of spuds around again. How true that was!

FF- I love the idea of your fish and potato in batter- can you still get that?

We never had scallops /fishcakes on offer- just massive baps ( bread rolls) to make a chip buttie!

[Florence Fennel]

Do you think its from "escalope"?

There's posh!

[Florence Fennel]

FF- I love the idea of your fish and potato in batter- can you still get that

You certainly can Nicos - when my SIL & BIL come over from France they buy a batch to take home and freeze. My sister used to do the same when she lived darn sarf, but she used to add non-brewed condiment vinegar and Henderson's Relish to her list.

[ladylottie]

I'm with FF on the pricing! Each week we would collect all the newspapers and take them to the chippies and swap them for a bag of chips. The real treat we called "Scrumps" - the bits of batter that fell of the fish in cooking - they were free but you had to ask for them, nicely! Is that your "scraps" FF?

Same with me - we called the bits of batter - guess what? Bits! So we asked if we could have chips with bits. Yum! So scraps, scrumps and bits - same thing all round the country. We don't get them now do we, mind you I can't remember the last time I had chips from a chippy.

[Thelma Sanders]

4 pen'orth I can remember, in a greaseproof bag and then wrapped in newspaper - and I liked a wally or pickled onions with mine

[veggiechicken]

As a kid in Cardiff, all our local chippies were in the front rooms of little terraced houses. Most streets had their own "takeaway". We had Auntie Annie, who lived across the road - I think she made chips on a Friday night. A Chip shop was a rarity.

[Currysniffa]

You certainly can Nicos - when my SIL & BIL come over from France they buy a batch to take home and freeze. My sister used to do the same when she lived darn sarf, but she used to add non-brewed condiment vinegar and Henderson's Relish to her list.

Cake butty with hendos relish I may have to take a drive over the border this weekend

Funny enough I have no memoires about how much chips cost when I was a kid